The Adjacent (35 page)

‘I need to get out of this place,’ Tarent said, and realized he had formed a whole sentence.

‘Don’t we all?’

‘I haven’t read anything by Graham Greene,’ he added. Coherent thoughts were forming for the first time in what felt like several days. It was an idea outside himself, the surrender he had made to the obsessions and fears and the loss of logical thinking. ‘Yes, I have,
I think,’ he added, remembering an old book about Brighton.

‘I’ve read a couple of his novels,’ Lou said. ‘And some of his short stories – I taught them a few years ago. But I’ve seen all of Fellini’s films.’

‘I can speak again.’

‘You’ve never stopped,’ Lou said. ‘You ran a fever and you were talking for hours.’

‘What did I say? Did it make sense?’

‘No.’

‘Do you mean you heard but couldn’t understand, or that you don’t want to tell me?’

‘I heard. I couldn’t understand most of it. It doesn’t matter – I’m used to people recovering from shock. Years ago I trained as a nurse.’

‘My wife was a nurse.’

‘That was Melanie?’

‘How do you know about Melanie?’

‘You kept saying her name. I knew your wife had died, but her name wasn’t on the database. I think you said she’d been killed by someone. Was that recently?’

‘Last week,’ Tarent said. ‘Or perhaps the week before. I’m out of synch with the world. I’ve lost days, dates.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I.’

‘You told me you were in Turkey. Was that where it happened?’

‘There was some kind of terrorist attack, and Melanie was accidentally caught up in it.’

Tarent fell silent, trying unsuccessfully to remember what he might have said before, not only when he was delirious but also when he first met this woman. It was difficult to think like that, think back, because his memory of recent events was in disorder. He remembered Melanie with love and sadness, but he also remembered the woman who would only tell him he should call her Flo. Was that her real name? He could not remember if he had found that out. The disorder in his mind held a new kind of fascination for him, and he felt himself slipping back into it, a confusion he wanted to embrace.

Lou must have sensed something. She took his head in her hands, held him until he opened his eyes. He realized what had happened, breathed deeply a few times.

‘Is nursing what you do now?’ he said. An effort of will, an intent to sound normal.

‘No – I told you. I’m a teacher. Nursing wasn’t for me. I was
coming out of my teens. I passed most of the exams, then I was employed by an agency for about a year before moving on. The only work I could find was abroad and I didn’t want to leave the country. Is that why your wife went abroad?’

‘Did I say that too?’

‘Turkey.’

‘My god, yes. I’m sorry. I keep forgetting what I’ve told you. Turkey was a part of what happened to me. I must have been out there too long, because now I’m home I feel as if this country has changed out of all recognition. I assume it’s just the way I see it now. I feel stuck in the past, but in some way I find completely confusing it’s a past I never actually knew. Or that’s how it feels. No, Melanie wanted a change. She was a theatre nurse and after several years the job became too much for her. She was trying relief work. I went with her to Turkey because I wanted to be with her, and I thought I could probably take photographs for the syndicate I work for. Anyway, I was interested to find out what was happening, but then we both did find out and I think we wished we had stayed here.’

‘How long were you away?’

‘I lost track of that. We were travelling for ages, then several months went by when we were at the field hospital.’

‘How do you think things have changed in Britain?’

‘It’s hard to say. When you’re away from home for a long time you tend to build up a false memory of what you’ve left: you keep thinking about either the best, or the worst of it. The ordinary, everyday stuff, your normal life, is something you don’t hold a clear memory of, because when things are ordinary you just do them. In Turkey everything was so bad for us, endlessly dangerous and depressing and threatening – Melanie sometimes worked a sixteen-hour day, which was too much for anyone. I shouldn’t have been there with her. I ought to have realized that before we left. After the first few days I had time on my hands. I spent hours alone, day after day. I was bored, but life was dangerous and unpleasant. I stayed inside the compound most of the time. I used to think about being a child again, doing what I had done then, seeing the sea, walking in woodland, playing with other children, just being happy and safe. I know it sounds infantile. Although in reality my childhood wasn’t particularly happy, and when I think back I can’t find any memories of actually doing those things. So it’s a sort of false nostalgia, something I must have made up or borrowed. Perhaps I saw it in a film once, or read it in books. My father died when I was very
young, and although I took British citizenship years ago I’m half American, half Hungarian. My mother worked in London so I grew up in this country. I was in London most of the time – I don’t recall a visit to the sea even once. Even though I did not have that particular childhood, it felt natural to look back and think how much better life was, or might have been, or perhaps might have been what I thought it ought to have been.’

Lou was sitting beside him, staring down silently at her hands. They were gripped together tightly, the skin on the back of each hand was corrugated by the pressure, her knuckles were straining under the skin.

‘When I came back here,’ Tarent said, ‘I think I was unconsciously looking for that. Being in the field hospital was hell. It was hell to work in, for Melanie and the rest of the medical staff, but it was just as bad to be there, to experience it. Turkey has become a desert – the climate has changed more than anyone outside the region knows. The whole of the Mediterranean basin has become unfit for habitation. I don’t suppose the people are suffering there any more than other places where the really hot weather has kicked in, but it’s more or less unlivable now. I can’t imagine what parts of Africa or Asia must be like. After Melanie was killed, the government transported me back to Britain straight away. It was like arriving in a different world. These storms – are they always as bad as this?’

‘Recent ones have been. There were two or three late last year that caused a vast amount of damage.’

‘Weather in Britain was always a joke, but there was never anything like this before. Is it just because of climate change, or is something else behind it? When I was being brought here I had to be transported in an armoured personnel carrier. I thought those were only used where there is an active insurgency, when you genuinely need to be protected. Aid teams routinely go everywhere in them. I didn’t know Mebshers were in use here, that things had become that bad. When I was inside the Mebsher, trying to see outside, it was like being carried through a waste land. Buildings down, floods everywhere, most of the trees destroyed. Then London: I was in a car at that stage, before they put me in the Mebsher. I had to pass through London for some reason, but the officials blanked the windows of the car so I couldn’t see out. Why do you suppose they did that? What I could see of the city had been transformed. The same in the country. Military everywhere, and police. And then
this process of government devolution: every official function being moved out to the provinces.’

‘There’s an undeclared war in progress,’ Lou said. ‘People here say it’s going to be the last war ever, the war that will end everything. They say the insurgents have some new kind of weapon – something we can’t defend ourselves against.’

ANOTHER PIECE OF BLOWN DEBRIS SLAMMED HEAVILY ON THE
roof and they both reacted as if something had physically burst into the room. Moments later a large branch skidded down past the window, half fell against the nearest metal strap and crashed into the yard outside. Tarent knew he was talking too much, as if some barrier inside had loosened. He concentrated on finishing the soup, which was cool now. Lou sat beside him, saying little. He kept thinking about Melanie, already a victim of this final war.

Later that day, as the winds at last started to abate, he began to feel as if he was regaining control of himself. Lou had returned to her own room. He looked at more of his pictures from Anatolia, but they depressed him. He could not carry on with that for long. He went online, searching for news channels or sites, but the government controls on the internet were as strict as those he had encountered abroad. All sites, channels and platforms were now graded according to security levels – the security clearance Tarent had been given for his journey abroad did not apply to the internet, and he had lost internet status when he went abroad. Almost nothing was accessible to him now. He went to find Lou, knowing he was becoming dependent on her, which was wrong, but needing to talk, which was essential. He felt guilty about that, but there was little he could do about it. She was all he had. His mind was starting to feel cluttered again.

As soon as she let him into her room he was overtaken by an irresistible desire to sleep. She let him lie down on her bed.

He woke up many hours later. There was the sound of wind, but it was quieter now. Lights were on in Lou’s room and there was a smell of cooking. The door to the bathroom was open, but the light was off in there. The windows to the outside were blackened by night. Lou was on the far side of the room, seated with her legs drawn up in one of the chairs. She had a book on her lap, but her head
was bent forward in sleep. Disoriented by this strange awakening, it took him a few minutes to leave the bed. He woke Lou gently, led her to the bed, made sure she was lying down.

He stayed with her for a while but soon returned to his own room. They were living in different time zones. He was wide awake. He showered, shaved and put on clean clothes, then tidied up the mess he had helped create in the room while he was ill.

The worst of his fears had receded again – he felt that he could remember them objectively but whenever he isolated one of the matters that had tormented him, brought it forward so that he could think about it properly, he found it unintelligible.

Later in the day Lou returned to him. He was pleased to see her. They embraced when she came to his door. She brought some food and a small bottle of red wine. She said that the vending machine had been replenished somehow, so there was more choice available at present.

‘Lou, you told me you lived in Notting Hill,’ he said. ‘You said your whole life was there.’

‘I lived in Notting Hill for many years. The last school I worked for was there. But then came the attack on May 10. My life there is over now.’

‘Did you have friends in Notting Hill?’

‘Some. The only one who really mattered was my partner. He was in our apartment on that day.’

‘So have you been able to find out what happened to him?’

She opened her hands wide, despairingly. ‘No one knows that. Everything in the area was totally obliterated. At first I couldn’t see how he could have escaped, but no bodies were found after the blast. In some ways it might have been better if there had been, better to know the worst. I was already here at Warne’s Farm when it happened and at first it was impossible trying to find out the truth. In one sense that’s even harder now, because so many of the TV channels have closed, but people pass through here all the time, so I’ve been able to find out more from them.’

‘You’ve been in this place since May?’

‘I arrived at the end of April. I was about to take up an appointment at a government school in Lincoln when the attack came. Everything went into paralysis straight away, so I hung on, thinking that’s what I should do, what anyone in the same position would do. I kept trying to contact Dumaka – that’s my partner’s name. I clung to the hope he might have been away from the apartment at the time, but
I realize now it was almost certain he wasn’t. He didn’t have many friends in Britain, but the ones I could contact knew as little as I did. I soon realized he must have been caught up in it.’

‘Can you tell me about him? About Dumaka?’

‘He’s a refugee from Nigeria – he’s what some of the staff at the Home Office call an illegal. They wouldn’t grant him permission to stay, and he absconded. At first I was frightened to ask about him, after May 10, because I knew that if he was still alive and they traced him they would deport him. You know what the rules are like now. He’s been in Britain for nearly fifteen years but that wouldn’t change anything. He came here with his brother but his brother has a visa, so he isn’t at risk – I met Dumaka when he came to the school to talk about his work. He makes jewellery, beautiful, delicate pieces, and at the time he had exhibited some work in London. For the sake of staying out of sight he always had to work under his brother’s name, but the brother didn’t like that and neither did Dumaka. They hardly speak to each other now. The longer Dumaka stayed here the safer he felt, but I knew it wasn’t the case. Anyway, we moved in with each other after we met. We were happy together for a year or two, but then things started going wrong. I don’t mean between us. The collapse of the euro-pound meant no one was buying jewellery any more and then I lost my job at the school. You know the population of London has been declining for years? They closed several of our classrooms because of the fall in student numbers and I was one of the teachers they made redundant. That’s why I started working for the government. It meant leaving Dumaka, but the idea was that it would be only temporary, a few weeks at most. As soon as I was settled in a secure position he was intending to follow me.’

She had turned her face away from him as she spoke. Her hands were clasped together again – Tarent could see the tension in her arm muscles. A tear had appeared on the curve of her chin. She brushed her hand over it. Tarent felt sad, and a realization of his selfishness swept over him. He had been so wrapped up in his own troubles that he had never wondered about this woman’s life, what it was like, or what it had been like.